Nina:
“Of course, what he didn’t realize was that she’d known about the affair for years. She’s got a vicious temper, Rick, you and I saw that. But she didn’t lose that temper. She kept it under control and planned a slow and cruel revenge.”
Adam Marsh:
“It’s out now; I heard early this evening from some of the interrogating officers. She hired a private investigator, I believe out of New Orleans, to shadow her husband. He was at first supposed to just dig up dirt on the romantic angle. But he was good, and found out about the embezzlement as well. So Amy knew everything.”
Nina continued:
“That was how Amy could write the letter that was delivered to Iverson at the stadium. While he was reading it, she was here at your place, Rick, composing the document the police found on your word processor.”
“But how did she know about my…”
“…your house? You told me that yourself, Rick. You said, when the provost and his wife first came to the campus, they invited you to dinner. And you reciprocated.”
“That’s right. I remember the evening they came over.”
“And you probably told them how you loved your little neighborhood. And how safe it was.”
“And how,” he said, quietly, “I never lock the front door.”
“She also would have had the chance to see your shotgun, hanging there like a trophy, just as it was until last night.”
“When she used it to blow away her husband…”
“…just as though he were an animal.”
They were silent for a time.
Finally, Nina asked:
“Adam, what have you heard about Lucinda?”
The attorney pursed his lips.
“It’s not the best situation.”
“No, I didn’t think it would be.”
“She’s going to be taking a leave of absence.”
“That’s what they’re calling it?”
“They’re telling her it’s a kind of vacation. Actually, she’ll be undergoing psychological evaluation at an…”
“Institute.”
“Yes. For want of a better term.”
“And she agreed to this?”
“Yes. As far as she’s concerned, she’s resuming duties of the presidency in a month or so. If she had refused, the university’s attorneys had collected enough information—mainly Whittington’s testimony—to have her removed for cause.”
A pause.
Then:
“The university community doesn’t know the full extent of the problem. They’ve been told though, that President Herndon will be leaving the residence tomorrow at 11 a.m. There will be a gala brunch. Lucinda will address the crowd. A last flourish, so to speak. We’re invited, of course.”
Silence for a time.
Rick:
“And so, Nina.”
“Yes.”
“The job you’ve been offered?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know, Rick. With Lucinda leaving…”
“I understand.”
“I feel so empty. So much has happened.”
“Sure.”
“All I can think to do now is go back to the little Hobbit House and get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow the world—well, it won’t be the same. You. Lucinda. No, it won’t be the same. But maybe after some sleep, it will make more sense.”
She honestly believed this.
And she was completely wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE: FAREWELL, FAREWELL, LUCINDA
Nina pulled her pants up and buttoned them. She was mulling over what was in front of her. Lucy Herndon with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Unthinkable. Impossible. Unbelievable. She pulled on her orange blouse with the bow ties and buttoned it up. Looking up at herself in the mirror, she pulled up the ties and tied a loose bow. She sighed. She sat on the bed and pulled on her shoes and socks. What could she possibly say to her? Shaking her head, she pushed open the door and walked toward campus.
Nina entered the president’s mansion through the side door she’d used before. Today, the room seemed gray, as if shades were closed during a cloudy day. The chairs were gray, the coffee table was gray, and Lucinda, standing motionless on the other side of the room, seemed gray. For a moment, it was silent in the room “Oh, Lucy!” cried Nina, crossing the room quickly and grabbing Lucy in a big bear hug.
Lucy was crying. Her shoulders shook gently as she bent her head onto Nina’s shoulder.
They stood together, arms wrapped around each other, rocking slowly back and forth.
“I can’t believe it!” said Nina.
“I know, I know, Nina, I’m so, so, sorry for what I did. I would never knowingly hurt you. You know that, don’t you?” Lucy pulled her head back and looked searchingly into Nina’s eyes.
Nina dropped her arms and began to pat Lucy gently on her upper arm. “Shhhh, I know, I know, it’s okay. It’s forgotten. Today is about you. What are you going to do, Lucy?”
Lucy pulled Nina over to the couch and they sat side by side, turned so they faced each other.
“It’s all so overwhelming, Nina. Living alone, I didn’t realize that I was “sun-downing” in the evenings. I would watch a little television and go to bed. I’m still in the early stages, so if I had an evening meeting, it would stimulate me enough to be aware and remember, but at home, apparently, I would just disappear into thoughts. No one knows how long I’ve been this way, but, since I live alone, I could have had symptoms for years that no one knew, but now it’s harder and harder to hold myself together.”
“I’m afraid they will ask you to step down, Lucy. What will you do? Is there medicine that can help you? What can I do?”
“They’ve started me on Aricept, but it’s hard to believe that little pill can make any difference. I have a phone number and an email address for a person from the Alzheimer’s Association at the hospital. I suppose I should start there with my questions. It’s so hard to plan what to expect, although I think we both know…” Her voice trailed off.
“I wish we could live closer, Lucy. I’ve decided to go back to Bay St. Lucy. I don’t suppose you could relocate down there?”
“No, no. This is what I know. I’m afraid that a new city would confuse me more. I’m afraid that losing my job will confuse me more. I’m afraid!” She clutched Nina’s hand. “Thank goodness for Professor Whittington. He’s a dear, dear, old friend. Do you know him?”
Nina blinked. “Yes, I met him two days ago.”
“He and Thomas and I were all so fond of each other. He has a guest room in the home he has across the street from campus. He’s making arrangements for me to stay there, and has offered to find a companion to stay with me when he has to leave. Although I don’t think I need a companion right now.”
“That’s a great idea, Lucy! You could still go to the library, maybe continue the research on projects you haven’t had time for with your busy job as president.”
Lucy nodded her head absent-mindedly.
“Oh! What are you doing here? I need to go and make my grand entrance as I do each time I meet with the faculty. I’m sorry, dear, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” She stood up and gestured to the side door. “I don’t know who you are, but if you’ll just go now, I can see if my secretary can arrange a meeting this afternoon in my office.” She smiled.
Stunned at this sudden appearance of the dementia, Nina stood up and moved toward the door. She turned. “Lucy?”
“Yes?”
“I will always love you.”
“Thank you, dear.”
And Nina left the building, closing the door gently behind her.
It was a luscious early September morning, wisps of clouds hanging motionless in the mid-September central Mississippi sky, and the scents of bougainvillea’s and late flowering marigolds inebriating the senses of those present There were not so many of them, given the occasion. No major public announcement had been made. A few close friends,
some scattered administrators and faculty members. It was not, except possibly in the mind of Lucinda Herndon herself, a particularly joyous occasion.
The press had been asked not to come, and, out of deference to the Grande Dame of Ellerton University, had stayed away.
Nina was there, of course, standing with Peter Stockton, Jackson, Rick, and Adam Marsh in the front yard of the residence. There were perhaps fifteen others, all watching Whittington of Classics as, eyes moist, he bent and croaked like the old man he was into a standing microphone.
“It is the end of an era,” he was saying. “How well I remember their coming. Thomas and Lucinda, the world in front of them, and this grand university, the center of that world. All of us young Turks of the faculty thought they could do no wrong. The life we created here, in those dazzling days when it always seemed to be summer or, at worst, the first cool time of the fall, when the colors became so magnificent. That was the life of the mind. Achilles strode these paths, and Oedipus in despair wandered over them. There were publications, of course, for we all loved to write. Not because our careers hinged upon it, but because of some innate drive that made us do so. You could not have stopped our writing any more than you could have stopped our gatherings, on each other’s yards, in any number of the scattered watering holes. We were the Algonquin Round Table and Lucinda was our Dorothy Parker, or at other times I fancied myself a budding Tolkien, carrying Middle Earth in my mind and discoursing mightily to C. S. Lewis, albeit of some other name.”
He stopped for a time to take out a handkerchief.
Peter Stockton used the pause to lean over Nina and whisper:
“I’m going to miss her. It won’t be the same.”
Nina, looking up into the craggy face:
“Your donation? The buildings?”
He shook his head.
“Not now. It’s going to be the same way it was. And I don’t want to support it anymore.”
Rick Barnes’ voice seeped through their group:
“Look, on the front porch. It’s Lucinda.”
And she had, in fact, had appeared behind the great glass doors, awaiting Whittington’s introduction.
She was wearing the same dark blue outfit she’d worn when Nina had breakfast with her a thousand years before.
“She always likes to make an entrance,” Nina whispered, so low that she was probably the only one who heard. “That’s what she told me on the morning we went and she addressed the faculty. She always likes to throw open those doors, with great dramatic flair, and stride out into the campus.”
Someone apparently had heard, for Adam Barnes responded:
“She’ll be doing it this time for the last time.”
None of them spoke.
Whittington:
“And now it is time.”
He took a sprig of some herb from his pocket, and ground it between his fingers, letting the crushed particles fall on the moist and glistening grass.
“Rosemary, as the dear Ophelia would have said, is for memory.”
Complete silence.
Then he turned and faced the doorway, saying:
“Come to us, fair Ophelia. And bid us, this one last time, adieu.”
Nina could remember seeing Lucinda Herndon’s wide, dazzling smile, reflected in a sunburst on the sparkling glass door.
She remembered the grand, sweeping arm gesture as the president threw open the doors.
It was then that the bomb, which tests later showed had been wired to the door, exploded.
Even some days later, Nina could recall the massive blow, like being kicked by a horse against a wall, the thrust spread evenly over her entire body, one thrust crushing her chest and the other snapping her neck and the base of her skull. She could remember thinking that someone had opened an oven door too quickly, the heat all rushing out and up into her face, burning her.
Then she was unconscious for a time.
When she awoke, there were the sirens, and people reaching down to her. And of course there were screams everywhere.
“Nina! Nina!”
She had no idea where the cries were coming from, or who might have been calling for her.
She also did not know how she got to her feet. Looking back, she decided that she must have been, at least at some point, crawling. But—this much she knew—she was on her feet when the stretcher carrying Lucinda Herndon was carried by beneath her.
She wondered where all the blood was coming from. It covered the stretcher, the sheets…”
Then Rick Barnes was there. He had somehow appeared, and was standing close by Nina, his arm around her.
Lucinda Herndon was looking up at both of them, but only seeing Rick, at whom she smiled:
“You’ve come for me, Thomas!”
And then she died.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX: TWO CONVERSATIONS WITH PEOPLE NOT PRESENT
The letter read as follows:
“I’m here now at the base of the stone jetty. It’s a good place, where I do a lot of crabbing. The town is deserted now, pretty much. School has begun, and the tourists are gone.
I’ve just come from feeding Furl. It’s as though I was never away.
Out in the ocean, right now, as I’m writing this, I can see my two porpoises, leaping out of the water, one after another, maybe half a mile out, where the water is green in the afternoon sun.
Leaping, leaping…
Now they’re gone.
I think about you a lot of course, and have, ever since I’ve been back home. I’m so happy you weren’t hurt in the blast. Of course, no one was, except for Lucy. We were all standing too far back. And maybe it’s for the best this way. She would have had to live a long time, with her mind ebbing away a little more every day.
I’ve been told that they’re still trying to find some kind of clue that might tell them who set the bomb, but I don’t think they ever will; Lucy had just made too many enemies. One of them––maybe several of them––was responsible for it. But, like I say, I’ve got a feeling they’ll never find out who.
Yes, maybe it’s for the best, this way.
I won’t forget you, Rick, or the time with you. The first night, when you came and interviewed me. And that remarkable day, when impossible things kept happening.”
Your house. Your cabin.
Just how easy it all felt.
But…
…but I think I’ll stay home now. This is my home. My life is here. As for the job Lucy offered me—well, it might have been exciting if she had truly won, and if her revolution had truly taken place. But she didn’t win. And revolutions––real ones––maybe only happen in books.
At any rate, Ellerton’s semester has begun now, and the same old story is going on.
Bureaucrats with big salaries and nothing to do.
Researchers pouring out tons of things no one can understand.
The same old story.
I hope you understand.
Thank you for everything, Rick.”
The letter was signed:
“Nina.”
After she’d written it, she folded it carefully and slipped it into the stamped, blue envelope that had already been addressed.
Then she took it to her Vespa, which had been chained not far from the base of the jetty.
There was a post box several hundred yards to the south on Breakers Boulevard, where she mailed the letter.
Then she drove back home.
The sun was going down. Its glow capped the waves golden.
She was walking now, her canvas slippers wet with the seawater that she allowed to splash upon them.
Hello.
Hello to you.
I haven’t talked to you in some time.
Don’t worry about it. I’m always here. You know that.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I…
Don’t.
It’s just that…it seemed right with him somehow. Like it was with us.
That’s good, Nina. You’re alive. That’s w
hat happens to people sometime. Living people, like you.
But it wouldn’t have been like us.
No, of course not. Nothing could ever be like that.
And still…I’m so sorry. So sorry.
Don’t worry. It’s like the song. You know? The one we loved so much?
The Sisters of Mercy?
Yes. That song. We aren’t lovers like that and, besides, it would still be all right.
And is it all right?
Of course, it’s all right. It will always be all right between us. Forever.
Thank you.
I love you, Nina.
I love you too, Frank.
And she went home.
EPILOGUE
Mind Change is just a fantasy.
It would have to be, would it not?
It could not be true.
Surely, American universities do not pay millions of dollars to administrators with titles such as Associate Vice President for Curriculum Control.
Surely, the research done at major state universities is always directly relevant to the lives of students at these institutions. Surely, full time faculty never teach as few as three or four courses per year and never go to needless conferences in various cities around the world, where all of their expenses are paid.
Surely, most of the students in American universities are not taught by adjunct faculty, who are paid approximately two thousand dollars per course.
Surely, there is no such university president as Lucinda Herndon, and never could be.
Surely, this is all just a fantasy.
It would have to be.
Wouldn’t it?
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Pam Britton (T’Gracie) Reese is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Science and Disorders Department at Indiana/Purdue University at Fort Wayne. Previously, she worked as a speech pathologist in schools in private practice. She was also a supervisor in communication disorders at Ohio University. She likes nothing better, professionally, than helping small, silent two-year-old boys start talking. She has also published books about autism with LinguiSystems for the last 15 years. The Circle of Autism was previously published online at ken*again e-magazine.
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